If enough people are in a conversation, one of them will be an expert. The larger the crowd, the more unexpected will be the expertise contained within it.

Of course, “larger” in this case may mean thousands, or tens of thousands. And, to uncover really obscure expertise, you may need millions of people. Of course that also means that you’ll need a social environment where obscure expertise can rise to the top. But that’s supposed to be impossible: Conversation doesn’t scale, we were told.

We were told wrong.

Unexpected expertise – KMWorld Magazine